Look into scene2d in libgdx. A bit of work getting the skins stuff going but once done rather easy. You can use the scene2d stuff just for rendering the UI and do your own stuff for the rest of the game.

Everything is at first. Setting up the stuff can be a pain, but once that is done, rather smooth. I would not recommend doing it yourself unless you want to learn how. If you want to make games, use apis.

It doesn't seem too difficult now after looking at some examples. It seemed complicated at first because I was overwhelmed at how much information there was on scene2d. Thanks everyone for the links and advice.

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